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I have no idea how to take a law school exam... what the fuck?
oldsak
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
Last semester I scored well on the exam I was least prepared for and scored poorly on the exam I felt most confidant for. This semester, I scored very well on a class I hardly attended and scored poorly on a class I felt I knew backwards and forwards.
Needless to say, I'm meeting with my professors asap.... but what the fuck?
Needless to say, I'm meeting with my professors asap.... but what the fuck?
oldsak on
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There there, sweety, it's alright. Study harder next time.
I think I'm missing something besides just studying.
Did you check the calendar? Maybe it was Opposite Day.
Also, clearly you need to stop studying and drop out of law school altogether, which would make you the most successful lawyer of all time. Or you can just not play the lottery and buy lots of crappy stocks on margin and become obscenely wealthy. Please send me 5% of what you make.
Taking a law school exam is itself a skill you must master in law school to survive...and like most skills you learn in law school, it has absolutely nothing to do with being a successful lawyer. Or passing your bar exams for that matter.
I was always taught to organize the essays in the f-IRA-c style:
facts (don't spend a lot of time on the facts, pick out what's essential to the question and move on);
ISSUE (what is it your professor is really asking you to answer);
RULE (What the law says...try to quote some relevant case law, but don't go nuts);
ANALYSIS (how the rule applies to the facts);
conclusion (tie everything together in a few sentences).
Maybe that will help, but we really need more information to help you. Are you having problems figuring out what the professor is asking in the tests, or are you forgetting the applicable law?
The exams on which I did the best in law school were the ones where I cut out all the extraneous writing and structured my answer exactly like the above. I would use Issue, Rule, Analysis, Conclusion as headings and focus on covering each section in as few sentences as possible. Of course, this depends on your professor. I had one professor who was offended by this method, and wanted us to write actual essays with real paragraphs and everything.
The worst thing you can do on a law exam is get bogged down and use too much time on one question. At the beginning of the exam, divide up your time equally for each question, and when time is up for a question, finish your sentence and immediately move on to the next one. If you have time at the end, go back and flesh out any answers you cut short.
Skip a line and only write on the front side of every page. If/when you go back, you will have space to fill in things you might have forgotten. It also makes your essay easier to read for a professor who is reading hundreds of them, and really would rather be working on that article he or she is getting published.
Edit: One more thing: read the entire exam before you start answering even one question. Then either start with the hardest or the easiest question first. I'll leave it up to you to decide which progression suits you best. If you start with the easiest question and work from easiest to hardest, there's a good chance that you'll have some extra time to finish that hard question all in one go, instead of having to back. On the other hand, after three hours of even "easy" law exam questions, I tended to find that my brain was pretty fried, and it would make that last, hard question that much harder. The point is that you don't have to answer the questions in numerical order; answer them in the order that suits you best.
I do try and start out with a general irac, but often end up tacking things on towards the end when I'm rushing to get things in there and I'm sure it comes out a bit jumbled.
I tend to just write slowly though. I probably spend too much time thinking about each sentence I write and can get pretty anal about having the exact phrasing I want. I have a feeling it takes me a lot longer to write the same amount of material than it does others.
i don't mean to sound obvious here, but did your professors have their previous exams available for study? from what i've read of law schools generally, many profs make their prior exams available as study aids (and as a means to show you what to expect/what they expect)
steam | Dokkan: 868846562
Most professors don't grade on spelling and grammar. Make your exam readable, but don't stress over sentence structure and stuff like that. Just try to get your point across.
Remember, your goal here is to accumulate points. In many cases it is better to hit three issues kind of briefly than to overexamine just one. That extra fifteen minutes you spend on that last paragraph may net you a single point. The first few points on any given issue are the easiest to get.
Also, are you allowed to type your exams? Because if that's an option, use it.
BTW, some mod just sent me an IM that this post was somehow an attack on you - please tell them that they're an idiot for me.
(Though honestly, if you somehow thought this was insulting, I'd feel bad and tell you that it wasn't intended that way).
Seriously, though, people - if somebody can explain to me how a rational person can look at this and go "yep, breaking PA rules," I'll know that either they're insane/illiterate or I am.
PS: Apparently, when somebody makes the ridiculous mistake of claiming something like that is an infraction, I cannot edit the last post: the edit would be that the mod of questionable competence/just-busy-and-made-a-dumb-mistake-if-I-give-them-the-benefit-of-the-doubt-that-was-not-afforded-me is "ViolentChemistry" or something like that. If somebody other than that person from that thread "reported" me, have the common decency to PM them so they know to take it back. I'm not attacking anyone here, as should be obvious assuming there isn't some language other than English that these posts can translate into that actually DOES look like some kind of attack. Sheesh.
Oldsak - perhaps you can practice your lawyering by pointing out how my post was in no way, shape, or form an attack or violation of PA rules (I'm not claiming it was uproariously clever, but come on...) to the now-obtuse/obstinate mod who is continuing to badger me even after I explained their mistake?
On-topic - while I only teach for the law school entrance exams, I know a lot of recently top-of-their-class law graduates, so if there's something more specific, maybe I can ask them, as I'm playing poker tonight.
Assuming some mod doesn't egomaniacally ban me for continuing to point out that they made a mistake by "jailing" me over that post. (Can you tell I taught for law school entrance exams yet?)
Uh...law school exams are curved. So, it's not your absolute performance that's importance, but the relative quality of your exam in the eyes of the grader.